Troubled Malaysia Air Poaches Aer Lingus Boss as New CEO

Mueller has his work cut out for him. It’s hard to turn around a company that’s so closely tied to the government.

— Jason Clampet

Share

Tweet

Share

Post

Send

Malaysia named Aer Lingus Group Plc Chief Executive Officer Christoph Mueller as the new CEO of flag carrier Malaysia Airlines to revamp the company after two high- profile plane crashes this year.

Khazanah Nasional Bhd., the biggest shareholder of Malaysian Airline System Bhd., named Mueller to head a new company being carved out of the publicly traded carrier, the state sovereign wealth fund said in an e-mailed statement today. The new company, to be called Malaysia Airlines Bhd., will become operational July, it said in the statement.

Malaysia’s government is taking the airline private by buying out small shareholders for 1.38 billion ringgit ($398 million) after the two crashes marred the already unprofitable carrier’s reputation and hurt passenger numbers. MH370 vanished from radar screens on March 8 without any warning, while MH17 was shot down in Ukraine in July.

The two accidents killed a combined 537 people. No debris of MH370 has been found in what’s the world’s longest search for a missing passenger jet in modern aviation history.

To contact the reporter on this story: Kyunghee Park in Singapore at kpark3@bloomberg.net. To contact the editors responsible for this story: Anand Krishnamoorthy at anandk@bloomberg.net

Serious about airlines? Subscribe to Skift Airline Weekly to get the strongest business insights in the world of commercial aviation

Photo Credit: A woman writes a message of support for family members of passengers onboard the missing Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 at Kuala Lumpur International Airport (KLIA) in Sepang, outside Kuala Lumpur March 18, 2014. Malaysia's top official in charge of the search for a missing jetliner rejected criticism on Tuesday from U.S. officials that it has not been sharing as much information as it could with foreign governments. Samsul Said / Reuters